1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to storage systems and, more specifically, to efficient distribution of data, including metadata, among storage systems configured to provide a distributed storage architecture of a cluster.
2. Background Information
A storage system typically includes one or more storage devices, such as solid state drives (SSDs), into which information may be entered, and from which information may be obtained, as desired. The storage system may logically organize the information stored on the devices as storage containers, such as files or logical units (LUNs). Each storage container may be implemented as a set of data structures, such as data blocks that store data for the storage containers and metadata blocks that describe the data of the storage containers. For example, the metadata may describe, e.g., identify, storage locations on the devices for the data.
A plurality of storage systems may be interconnected as a cluster and configured to provide storage services relating to the organization of the storage containers stored on the storage devices. The storage system cluster may be further configured to operate according to a client/server model of information delivery to thereby allow many clients or hosts to access the storage containers. Yet often a large number of data access requests issued by one or more hosts may be directed to storage containers serviced by a particular storage system of the cluster. As a result, the storage system attempting to service the requests directed to the storage containers may exceed its processing and storage resources to become overburdened, with a concomitant degradation of speed and performance.
Thus, to ensure fast and efficient access to data and associated metadata in a cluster of storage systems, it is desirable to leverage the storage and processing resources of the cluster by enabling all of the storage systems to serve, i.e., store and process, the data and metadata. Leveraging of such resources enables scale-out throughout the cluster, as well as reduction of processing load on the storage systems of the cluster, i.e. the processing load and storage consumption are distributed throughout the cluster.